


Astray

by SiobhanCven



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), youtube - Fandom
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Drugs, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-09 18:05:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1149147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SiobhanCven/pseuds/SiobhanCven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short fic from the point of view of Chris Kendall. I don't really want to say much because it's so short but watch out for the drugs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Astray

My car screeched to a halt in a car park much too far from the hospital for my liking, I flew out of the car, my heart already pounding from the events of the past few hours. I ran, ran as fast as I could along the seemingly endless rows of cars until the entrance was finally within my sight. I let out a sigh of relief and closed my eyes.  
Suddenly, I was six years old again, lost in the supermarket and almost crying because of all the faces that were too high up and too preoccupied to see me. I was lost, I was sure my dad had been right behind me. I began to sink to the floor and wait to be found. That was, until around the corner came another face, although this one was on the same level as me, and looking directly into my eyes.  
“You’re lost too, aren’t you?”  
His big green eyes were now boring into my own. A small smile changed his inquisitive expression into one of confidence and excitement.  
“Well come on then, we’re going on an adventure.”  
At this, he grabbed my hand and began leading me through the aisles, telling me of the great horrors that lurked behind every carton of milk, and the monsters that would most certainly devour us if we were to leave. While we wandered, he told me of the adventures he went on whenever he got lost; he seemed to do that a lot.  
We eventually found our parents and a friendship was born.  
I hadn’t spoken a word.  
That was thirteen years ago.  
My stabbing headache blurred my vision as I remembered that day, the day he came into my life at six years old and welcomed me into a world that had previously been chiefly his own. I could feel sweat pouring down my body, but the icy draft that engulfed me while I bolted through the pristine sliding doors and into the sterile foyer of the hospital did little to stem the flow that quickly soaked through patches of my shirt.  
In a flash, I was sitting in the long summer grass while he was climbing higher and higher in the great plum tree, its boughs heavy with fruit. His head would occasionally poke out of the green canopy and call out to me. My answer was always a strangled yell, as ripe plums rained down upon me, staining my shirt a deep purple. At this, I would lay back down, letting the warm air enfold me, close my eyes and listen to his laughter as I drifted off to sleep. My rest was always short lived; before I was deeply asleep, I would be dragged down the river, his long fingers wrapped around my wrists.  
The inky water always welcomed us, cooling our bodies in a way the hot wind couldn’t. For hours we used to swim in that river, our laughter occasionally accompanied by the flash of a small silver fin that belonged to the fish that made their home in the same river we used to cool down and wash the sticky plum juice from our clothes.  
He was always the one to stay in the water the longest, still deep within his own head long after my clothes had dried in the sun.  
This is my memory of those years. We were eight years old and we promised to be friends forever.  
Tears prickled in my eyes, reddening my face and obscuring my vision as the events of the past hours washed over me once more and my whole being ached with guilt.  
Angry now, I flung myself ever faster towards administration.  
“Pj Liguori” I almost yelled at the bespectacled secretary,  
After looking up and me, then typing painfully slowly on her computer, she finally whispered  
“He’s in the ICU. Down the hall and to the right.”  
The look of pity on her face was almost too much to bear. I ran.  
I was back at my first day of high school, the stiffness of my uniform reflected the state of my muscles perfectly. I wandered through the crowds of other twelve year olds. In my mind they were all happier to be there than I was. He saw me and ran down the long corridor towards me, his light green eyes and unruly brown curls were soon all I could see.  
“You’re late. That’s not like you.” He said, a tone of worry pricking his usually carefree tone, making me even more anxious about the day ahead.  
“I had to iron my shirt, sorry if that was an inconvenience.”  
“Why did you bother? Was it to look nice? It was, wasn’t it.” He raised his eyebrows while his eyes bored into my own.  
“Um…well yes I guess it was.”  
“For these people?’ His tone was flat. He spun around and promptly left me floundering in the bustling hall.  
After what seemed like years, we reunited at recess, in the shade of a large tree, protecting us from the scorching sun. We laughed at the people trying to make new friends and settling into groups. We laughed because in our minds we would always have each other, and we would never need to fit in with anyone else.  
Throughout that year at school, I did my work, rode the bus school and sat at the base of the tree with him everyday, I even made friends with some people in my classes, not that I spent time with them outside classes. He never made friends with the other kids, and he still had the same far away look he had when we first met. He was still off adventuring in his own little world and he wasn’t interested in letting anyone else in but me.  
My lungs were in agony every time I took a breath, and my legs were burning but I couldn’t stop running through the corridors to get to him. I needed to see him, to be with him the way we hadn’t been together in years. I tried to stop blaming myself for the state he was in, but there was nothing I could do to convince myself that if I could control my anger with him, I wouldn’t have left him in the state he was in, and I could have been watching movies at my house with him, and not running towards the ICU, hoping he was still breathing.  
My mind grew hot remembering our first fight.  
We stood outside his house, on the pathway that had hosted hundreds of games of hopscotch between us over the past nine years. His face was red and he had tears streaming down his cheeks. His hair was messy in a way I hadn’t seen it for a long time, his curls weren’t jubilant and bouncy anymore, but lank and dull.  
“Peej, calm down, I thought I told you I wasn’t going to spend lunch with you today, that I was going to spend it with that other group, and that you were welcome to join me.” I tried to be reasonable, it made perfect sense to me, I had told him that some of my other friends asked me to be a part of their group. I knew he never liked to interact with anyone unless he had to, but I thought that at the age of fifteen he would have matured somewhat, but the rage-stricken face was the same one as I had met between the towering shelves when I was six.  
“I didn’t think you were being serious, I mean, why would you be? They aren’t your friends, I am.” His face fell, more tears escaped his eyes and he whispered, almost to himself, “They didn’t ask me, but then again, why would they? I’m just the weird kid, always on my own in my head. Yeah, that’s me.” He sighed, turned around and trudged away from me.  
It was at this point that the view I had brought with me since he had first approached me crumbled. No longer did I see a boy who was always lost in his imagination, with no time for the world around him. No longer was he the boy who seemed to walk absent-mindedly through the throngs of teenagers milling around classrooms at school.  
Now I could see through act he put on. He wasn’t someone who didn’t want to fit in, he was someone who desperately wanted to be like the people who had befriended me, like me even. He was someone who was desperate to be able to connect with people, without the constant fear of not doing it right, and being forced even further into the background.  
I remembered his tear-filled green eyes while almost colliding into a wall before hurling my body around to the right, following the sterile corridor, dotted with doctors and nurses who were clearly waiting for their shift to be over. The pain in my body had escalated into a series of painful throbs that seemed to come from every part of my body. I gave thanks that I hadn't had any alcohol earlier.  
If only he had made the same decision. I wished he had made the same decision.  
With a sigh I slowed to a walk and entered the ICU. With the flashing lights and high pitched noises of about a hundred different machines came the memories of the past few years of our friendship.  
We still sat together every day, although long silences began to creep into our conversations, leaving both of us staring into space as we quietly chewed our food. We still saw one another on weekends, but these meetings became more and more brief. We never stayed over all night anymore. The conversation was always the same.  
“Hey Pj, why don’t you stay over? I’ve got a ton of movies we need to watch.” I would always try to sound enthusiastic; I always tried to bring us closer together.  
“I already told you. I can’t, I have somewhere to be tonight.” The sharpness of his words hurt me. Despite this, I tried to sound interested.  
“Where are you going then?” To my ears, the hurt was obvious but I hoped he didn’t hear it. His response was sharp and cutting,  
“You’re not my only friend.” With this, he either stormed out of my house, or fixed me with an icy glare until I scampered back down the street to my own bedroom, where I would more often than not cry myself to sleep while he was out with her newfound friends.  
I heard stories about these ‘friends’, stories about drugs, alcohol, all the things I kept away from. He would never mention any of her outings to me and I didn’t press him for anything.  
The years dragged on like this until after school we lost touch completely until earlier tonight. I knew he would be at the same party as me, and I vowed to try to make it right, but he was too drunk to listen and too high to care. As the party drew to a close I saw him stumble out into his car. It was my first instinct to insist that I drive him home, but then I remembered his sharp cutting words that left me doubting our friendship for years. I turned my back on him.  
I turned my back on him and here I was, standing at the foot of the bed marked “Pj Liguori”.  
His parents were sitting by her bed, their faces twisted with grief and their eyes glassy with fatigue. His now pale hand was enveloped by his mother’s brown ones. My gaze shifted to his father’s face, tears were cascading down his cheeks and onto his shirt, but he didn’t look like he had realised, his eyes were fixated on the bed in front of him.. I noticed that there weren’t any machines or doctors around his bed, no tubes connecting him to something that might save him. This meant only one thing.  
I was too late.


End file.
